Pre-Summit of the Future Event with Think Tanks in Changsha, Hunan

Excellencies,

Distinguished experts,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am glad to join this Pre-Summit of the Future event, co-organized by the International Cooperation Center of the People’s Republic of China and the United Nations in China in Changsha, Hunan Province. This event builds upon several Pre-Summit of the Future events that the UN in China has already organized, and we will hold further events across the five different areas of the Summit of the Future in the coming months to inform the deliberations that will take place in New York and provide inputs on the role China can play in addressing many of these issues.

We are witnessing profound strain on the multilateral system due to myriad challenges, including the post-pandemic recovery, climate change, and an increasing number of regional conflicts, that is both putting at risk our ability to realize the promises of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and leading some to question the continued relevance of the United Nations System.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres, has made UN reform and making the UN fit for purpose overarching objectives during his term as Secretary General. In 2021, at the request of the General Assembly, he launched Our Common Agenda, which the Secretary-General describes as “aimed at turbocharging the 2030 Agenda and making the Sustainable Development Goals real in the lives of people everywhere. Because halfway to 2030, we are far off track. We will only make up lost ground by addressing the gaps and challenges that have emerged since 2015 – including gaps in intergovernmental cooperation.”

Our Common Agenda was accompanied by 11 policy briefs that address topics such as youth engagement, a global digital compact, international financial architecture, and others. The final policy brief, on creating a UN 2.0, focuses on modernizing the UN system with cutting-edge skills and a forward-thinking culture to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, the policy brief stresses the need to build capacity in five key areas: innovation, data, digital, foresight and behavioural science. By incorporating these tools into our work, we will have a UN that is fit for purpose to respond to the global challenges we are facing.

Our Common Agenda concluded with a call for a Summit of the Future to forge a new global consensus on readying ourselves for a future rife with risks but also opportunities. The General Assembly accepted this recommendation, and the Summit will take place in September 2024 in New York.

As part of the preparations for the Summit of the Future, the Secretary-General convened a High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. This group was convened following the release of Our Common Agenda and the decision to hold a Summit of the Future, and it published its final report in April of 2023. The report offers detailed recommendations on how to strengthen the global architecture for peace, security and finance, deliver just transitions for climate and digitalisation, and ensure more equity and fairness in global decision-making. It also argues that gender equality needs to be at the heart of a reinvigorated multilateral architecture along with recommendations to ensure the multilateral system is more networked, more inclusive and more effective. The recommendations from this Board’s work will be taken as inputs for the Summit of the Future and its outcome document, the Pact for the Future.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Summit of the Future is arranged around 5 key topics: sustainable development and financing for development; science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation; international peace and security; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance. 

The Summit of the Future aims to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future, reinvigorating the multilateral system to respond to both existing commitments and taking concrete steps to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. The key outcome of the Summit will be the Pact of the Future, an action-oriented outcome document that will lay out the key steps and actions we all must take to better manage our current and future challenges.

This event follows visits to China by senior UN leadership in the past month – first, the Under-Secretary-General of Policy, Mr. Guy Ryder, who is leading preparations for the Summit of the Future and met with government officials to discuss preparations for the Summit. 

This visit was followed by a visit from the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, Mr. Amandeep Singh Gill, who held discussions on issues related to AI and digital technology.

These two visits were followed by the first two pre-Summit of the Future events organized by the UN in China. These included an event co-organized with the Permanent Mission of China to ESCAP and the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) in Bangkok, which focused on accelerating progress towards sustainable development that took place on the margins of the 80th session of ESCAP. The second event was focused on artificial intelligence (AI), was co-hosted with the United Nations University Macau Office, and took place on the margins of UNU’s 2024 AI Conference, where it focused on AI applications to advance progress on the SDGs and the need for a global AI governance framework.

Today we are here to discuss the importance of multilateralism and how multilateralism is the only way for us to adequately address the challenges we face. These challenges: achieving sustainable development, ensuring adequate and affordable development financing, combating climate change, developing governance structures for AI, pandemic preparedness, among others, are global in nature and require a global response. No one country or region can effectively mitigate climate change or prepare for the next pandemic without cooperations with the global communities, as these challenges connect us all and affect us all.

The United Nations sits at the center of the multilateral system and serves the unique role of connecting and convening all countries of the world to discuss these, and other, challenges and to develop global solutions. While this role is more essential than ever, the increasingly complex challenges we face have led some to question if the UN has the ability to continue to serve this role.

This question is a red herring, as there is no other organization where each country, whether the wealthiest, having the largest population, or being a least developed country or a small island developing State, has the same voice and weight in the discussions. The UN may need to continue to evolve and adapt to our current challenges, but its overarching role and objectives are more important than ever. 

Let us, for a brief moment, consider the consequences of moving away from multilateralism. Instead of reducing global and regional conflict, this would be exacerbated. We would move to a multipolar world where groups of countries would ally and develop systems that would likely be incompatible with those from other regions. As an example, think about AI. If countries develop AI systems in isolation, without some level of basic coordination and discussion, these systems and the data that powers them may be incompatible with systems developed elsewhere. 

This would force countries to choose one system or another and would lead to intense competition between countries to have their system be the most used. This would be made for the global community and would lead to increased fragmentation.

In contrast, if countries can come together to agree on a common set of fundamentals and rules that form the basis of an international AI governance framework, this would allow everyone to operate from the same starting point, increase the likelihood of systems and data being interoperable, and increase collaboration instead of competition. This would support ensuring AI is used for good rather than for other purposes and would also enhance international and south-south cooperation, allowing all countries to benefit from these advances and is one of the goals of the Summit of the Future, with the expected adoption of a Global Digital Compact at the event.

This example encapsulates the main objective of the Summit of the Future: to highlight the importance of multilateralism and to develop a road map and action-oriented agenda to address these global challenges. I am hopeful that progress will be made across a number of areas, including reform to international financial architecture that both increase access to financing for sustainable development and make it more affordable, while also highlighting new and innovative financing streams, especially from the private sector, and the role this can play.

In my time as RC in Kenya, I supported the Government of Kenya in the construction of a new highway from the airport to the city centre. Instead of the Government taking out a loan, my team at the UN analyzed the different options and recommended they enter into a public-private partnership with the company building the road (who happened to be Chinese). This road was constructed in record time and under budget, without the Government needing to borrow any money. 

Examples such as these demonstrate the power of thinking outside the box and of public-private partnerships. They also serve to connect countries, building mutual understanding and strengthening the multilateral system.

China has been an important supporter of the United Nations and the multilateral system and their active participation in the drafting of the Pact for the Future and the Summit for the Future are essential to its success. The experiences and expertise China has across multiple areas can serve as key examples, and through China’s increasing role in international and South-South Cooperation, these examples and expertise can be shared with the world.

Dialogues such as the one we are having today are critical for identifying new ideas to strengthen multilateralism to allow us to more effectively address our current challenges. Reinvigorating the multilateral system is essential for us to achieve the SDGs, combat climate change and respond to other global challenges. 

As the Secretary-General stated, “We must recognize that humanity’s very future depends on solidarity, trust, and our ability to work together as a global family to achieve common goals. No community or country, however powerful, can solve its challenges alone. Multilateral action has achieved an enormous amount over the past 75 years. Our Common Agenda must be a starting point for ideas and initiatives that build on these achievements.”

While Our Common Agenda is the starting point, the Summit of the Future and the Pact for the Future will provide us with the roadmap to achieve the future we all know is possible. As President Xi stated, “By setting sail together, we could ride the wind, break the waves, and brave the journey of ten thousand miles. We may at times encounter stormy and dangerous rapids, but as long as we pool our efforts and keep to the right direction, the giant vessel of human development will stay on an even keel and sail toward a brighter future.”

I look forward to the rest of the discussions at today’s event and from hearing about your ideas, as these can serve as critical inputs to both our other upcoming Pre-Summit of the Future events with other sets of stakeholders, as well as in the deliberations that will take place in the lead up to and during the Summit of the Future in September.

Thank you.